Conflicting effects of compatible teacher diversity beliefs on primary school students' diversity attitudes

Teachers' diversity beliefs can impact their students' diversity attitudes. In this longitudinal study, we examined how teachers' beliefs about acknowledging cultural diversity (ACD) in combination with their beliefs about emphasizing cultural commonalities (ECC) and socialization of the national culture (SNC) were associated with their ethnic majority students' ( n = 821, M age = 10.03 years, 49.9% females) diversity attitudes across the school year. Multilevel analyses indicated that, overall, the associations between teachers' beliefs and students' diversity attitudes were limited. Additionally, there were some small-sized interaction effects that suggested that teachers' diversity beliefs do not act in isolation, but that specific combinations of beliefs were associated with diversity attitudes of ethnic majority students. When teachers endorsed both ECC and ACD beliefs, their ethnic majority students became more in favor of cultural assimilation by immigrants. Moreover, teachers' SNC beliefs hampered the positive associations between ACD beliefs and students' attitudes toward immigrant-origin children and support for cultural maintenance. Hence, compatible teacher beliefs seem to have small, yet conflicting effects. Associations between teacher beliefs and diversity attitudes of immigrant-origin students ( n = 831) were explored as well. Teachers' beliefs were not associated with immigrant-origin students' diversity attitudes.